Shove

Shove is a common Bonus Action that allows the user to shove an enemy, pushing them away (and possibly off ledges or into harmful effects).

Description

Try to push your target away.

Your success depends on your Athletics, and the target's Athletics or Acrobatics. You have Advantage if you're  Hidden or  Invisible.

The shove distance depends on your Strength and the target's weight.

Properties

Cost:

Bonus action

Details:

 Range: 1.5 m / 5 ft

Notes

• The target rolls either an Athletics or Acrobatics Skill Check, whichever is higher, to contest the attempt. The shoving creature, however, always rolls Athletics.
• As of Patch 6, shoving an allied creature always succeeds, though the weight conditions described above must still be met.
• The distance an object or creature can be shoved is restricted to a minimum of 1 m / 3 ft and a maximum of 6 m / 20 ft.
  • The maximum shove distance is for level terrain. When shoving an object off a ledge, it can go further than 6 m / 20 ft since it will continue its parabolic trajectory as it falls.
• Shove can also be used to rouse a creature from  Sleeping or help them shake off the effects of certain spells like  Hypnotic Pattern.

Shove mechanics

A valid shove. The goblin will be pushed into the pit and land in a valid location, taking significant fall damage.

For a shove to be valid, the target creature must land in a position where it could normally stand or into a dedicated chasm. Chasms can be identified by the "Chasm" tooltip that appears when hovering your cursor over them. Pushing a creature into a chasm will instantly kill it, but the body and any loot it carries will (usually) be lost forever.

An invalid shove. The goblin would be shoved into the wall which is not a valid location. Rather than hitting the wall and then falling into the pit, this shove is prevented entirely.

Attempting push a creature into an invalid location (for example, into a wall) will show a red shove preview. While the game does not prevent you from making an invalid shove, doing so will not move the target even if the roll is successful.

Shove roll

When attempting to shove a non-allied creature, both the target and the shover make skill checks in a contested roll. The shover makes a normal Athletics check against a DC determined by the target's passive skill using either Athletics or Acrobatics, whichever is higher. This passive skill is equal to 10 + skill bonus with Advantage on the relevant skill checks adding 5 and Disadvantage subtracting 5. For example, a barbarian at level 1, with 17 Strength, proficiency in Athletics, and currently  Raging will have a passive Athletics skill of:

10 + 3 (STR modifier) + 2 (Proficiency) + 5 (Advantage on STR checks) = 20

If the shover's roll meets or exceeds the target's passive skill, the shove will be successful. Shove attempts cannot critically fail, provided rolling a natural 1 would still beat the target's passive Acrobatics or Athletics skill.

An example of the erroneous shove DC shown in the combat log.

Information on the contested skill check is not readily visible in-game since, in the combat log, the DC of a shove skill check is always erroneously shown as 0. The percentage chance preview before making a shove is accurate, however.

Shoving is one of the few cases where skill checks are made in combat. As a result, this is one of the few uses for the component of  Hex that imposes Disadvantage on skill checks of a specified ability. Hexing Strength will greatly reduce the chance of an enemy successfully shoving you and make it easier to shove high Strength enemies. Hexing Dexterity will make it significantly easier to shove high Dexterity enemies. Note that it is not possible to see an enemy's skill bonuses in the inspect window, so it is not always easy to determine whether hexing Strength or Dexterity would be more impactful.

When targeting an ally, Shove does not require a skill check and will always succeed, provided all other prerequisites for a successful shove are met. This behaviour was added in Patch 6 and prior to that, shoving allies required passing a skill check.

Shove weight

The weight of a target object and a creature's Strength score determine whether a shove attempt can be made in the first place. The requirement is:

${\text{Strength score}}\times {\text{Multiplier}}\geq {\text{Target object weight}}$.

Note that this is the full Strength score, not the Strength ability modifier that is usually used. The multiplier is 12 unmodified, but is increased to 28.2 for  Enlarged creatures, and decreased to 5.1 for  Reduced creatures.

Smaller characters like gnomes do not receive penalties to max shove weights. The multiplier is adjusted specifically by the Enlarge/Reduce conditions and has nothing to do with creature size. Even functionally identical effects like  Elixir of The Colossus or  Giant Form do not affect the maximum shove weight.

If the weight condition is not met, attempting to shove an object or creature will display a message "Too heavy to Shove."